Domesday Book

Domesday Book (/ˈduːmzdeɪ/ or /ˈdoʊmzdeɪ/), now held at The National Archives, Kew, in South West London, is the record of the great survey of much of England and parts of Wales completed in 1086. The survey was executed for William I of England (William the Conqueror): "While spending the Christmas time of 1085 in Gloucester, William had deep speech with his counsellors and sent men all over England to each shire to find out what or how much each landholder had in land and livestock, and what it was worth" (Anglo-Saxon Chronicle).

One of the main purposes of the survey was to determine who held what and what taxes had been liable under Edward the Confessor; the judgment of the Domesday assessors was final—whatever the book said about who held the material wealth or what it was worth, was the law, and there was no appeal. It was written in Latin, although there were some vernacular words inserted for native terms with no previous Latin equivalent, and the text was highly abbreviated. Richard FitzNigel, writing around the year 1179, stated that the book was known by the English as "Domesday", that is the Day of Judgment:

for as the sentence of that strict and terrible last account cannot be evaded by any skilful subterfuge, so when this book is appealed to ... its sentence cannot be put quashed or set aside with impunity. That is why we have called the book 'the Book of Judgment' ... because its decisions, like those of the Last Judgment, are unalterable.

In August 2006, a limited online version of Domesday Book was made available by the United Kingdom's National Archives site, charging users £2 per page to view the manuscript. In 2011, the Open Domesday site made the manuscript freely available for the first time. A survey approaching the scope and extent of the Domesday Book was not attempted until the Return of Owners of Land, 1873 which presented the first subsequent complete picture of the distribution of landed property in the British Isles and is thus sometimes referred to as the "Modern Domesday".